This is a great sign for the entire government technology space.
The potential for impact is massive. If we can save 1 hour per week for each of the 10.5 million local government employees, that unlocks 273,000 years of human potential every 12 months.
To rekindle love for public service, Seneca Systems is hiring in product design, front, and back end engineering.
If you've ever worked for or with a government entity, you'd find that saving time or money isn't a priority. In fact, departments try to spend as much as their budget as possible for fear they won't get as much next year.
I look at it a little more optimistically...sure departments try to spend every last penny of their budget so that they don't lose that funding. That's a given. What if departments could spend every last penny BETTER?
Maybe its true that saving money isn't a priority, but spending money on things that have the most impact, or that get the most value is a priority.
I work for OpenGov, so I hear this from our customers (who work in government) all the time.
We don't find this to be true at the local level. Our customers are cost-sensitive, and we find the time savings our product provides to be a major selling point.
We haven't done any work yet at the state or federal levels, so maybe we'll encounter this attitude there.
We hear that assumption a lot, but it hasn't been the case in our experience (working with Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, etc.).
At the local level, budgets matter. Even if you're going to spend your entire budget, spending less on tools frees up more budget to spend on other things. Things like community events, more staff, creating programs to engage or serve under-represented groups, commissioning cross-departmental studies.
Saving time absolutely matters. The common belief is that local government employees are lazy or incompetent. Again, we've never found that to be true. Many of them came into public service to serve their communities — no one gets into local government for fame or fortune — but were beaten down by the bureaucracy.
They are motivated to do good and better back office tools help them achieve their goals.
FYI the https link goes to a pure html website for some reason, I would recommend following their http link.
Seneca seems like quite a cool company I like the Roman references. I would be curious what kind of opportunities do you see in a European context for government tech?
We're really excited by the opportunities in Europe and local governments across the world. A few weeks ago we got an inquiry from Ireland and we've been told multiple times that governments in India would also be great candidates.
The problems are similar. Many local governments try to shoehorn tools from the private sector — Excel, SalesForce, Post-Its — into their operations. These "work" but are far from the right tool for the job and put the onus of ensuring compliance on the office.
That is further compounded by the relative lack of European based startups. Data has to be held within the country. Some laws are vague or have loopholes, but we firmly believe that constituent information should not be subject to other states' snooping. That means recreating tools specifically for European regulations and cloning the infrastructure per country. Not impossible, we're just not there yet.
P.S.
The Roman references are just the tip of the iceberg. Both founders are philosophers so our values (http://seneca.systems/values) are the heart of the company.
I was really hoping this project would be legislation voting and tracking for the people. I vaguely remember a project from 5 or so years ago that was called Open Gov based around legislation. Did OpenGov pivot? Maybe it was called something else.
You're probably referring to http://opengovernment.org/ by the Sunlight Foundation and Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF).
The work continues! My company DataMade is working with PPF to make local legislation more accessible, starting with Chicago, New York and Philly: http://councilmatic.org/
Indeed, our non-profit project OpenGovernment.org, launched in Jan. 2011, is still available in open-source code for legislative tracking: https://goo.gl/ThcG00. This includes the GovKit Ruby gem, which aggregates open government data with social context to make legislative info more accessible. We're always looking to re-boot OpenGovernment.org (OG for short) to focus on contacting state-level elected officials and discussing issues in the news on the open web - more about our goals of open data at every level of gov't: http://opengovernment.org/pages/about.html. And yes, as Derek said, check out Councilmatic for city-level transparency and engagement.
I interviewed with the team and learned about their projects. Speaking candidly, I was ecstatic and optimistic about a "civic" startup, that has potential to bring tech break throughs to neighborhoods and local governments; however their current projects didn't seem that exciting, they rubbed me off more as projects any appropriately marketed consulting shop could take.
Look at what OpenGov is doing: making government financial data more transparent and accessible. Compare that with your average Yet-Another-Food-Delivery startup or "bringing the blockchain to an industry that doesn't need a blockchain."
2) The people you work for are unbelievably appreciative.
Every local government office we work with is so thankful for what we do. Basic features — scheduling an email reminder, scoping by geography, autocomplete — blows their minds. This goes back to (1), since you're helping them accomplish really meaningful objectives.
3) If you keep the hiring bar high, your team is incredible.
Passion is something you hear a lot about in the Valley, but how passionate can you really be about SnapChat. Maybe there are interesting challenges, but get a group together that wants to take on government and you're guaranteed to jump out of bed in the morning.
Precisely _because_ most people see working with governments to be a schlep, the ones who do self-select for passion.
This is comical. Marc Andreesen is the least OpenGov-style person I can possibly think of. He is literally the definition of the American Oligarchy. When confronted with the Snowden revelations he said both that:
1. Everyone knew that the government was doing this.
2. That Snowden was a traitor.
Snowden's treason was only possible if the public didn't know what has been going on, so really this is code for "us guys with investments into company's that the INT organizations have contacted know what is really going on; we don't need a pesky whistle blower leaking it to the public".
OpenGov my ass.
"If you look up in the encyclopedia 'traitor' there's a picture of Ed Snowden."
That is fucking Andreesen. He's not on our side. He's the enemy, in the same group as the banks that are corrupting our governments.
I get political realism / anarchy in international relations. I really do. I get how every telegraph ever sent is recorded in some American or British INT station.
But publicly shaming someone that validated that we essentially live in 1984 as a fucking traitor / criminal is despicable.
Some of us can't be bought. Some people don't care about money so much that they'll keep silent about assholes ruining our democracies.
Andreesen is just the one we have on record. Half of fucking wall street and Washington think like him.
And if you find this comment downvoted just remember that our intelligence agencies have tools to manipulate internet discussions:
18 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 42.3 ms ] threadThe potential for impact is massive. If we can save 1 hour per week for each of the 10.5 million local government employees, that unlocks 273,000 years of human potential every 12 months.
To rekindle love for public service, Seneca Systems is hiring in product design, front, and back end engineering.
Ruby, Elixir, React, Postgres, geospatial mapping.
http://seneca.systems/careers
Maybe its true that saving money isn't a priority, but spending money on things that have the most impact, or that get the most value is a priority.
I work for OpenGov, so I hear this from our customers (who work in government) all the time.
We haven't done any work yet at the state or federal levels, so maybe we'll encounter this attitude there.
At the local level, budgets matter. Even if you're going to spend your entire budget, spending less on tools frees up more budget to spend on other things. Things like community events, more staff, creating programs to engage or serve under-represented groups, commissioning cross-departmental studies.
Saving time absolutely matters. The common belief is that local government employees are lazy or incompetent. Again, we've never found that to be true. Many of them came into public service to serve their communities — no one gets into local government for fame or fortune — but were beaten down by the bureaucracy.
They are motivated to do good and better back office tools help them achieve their goals.
http://opengov.com/careers/
Seneca seems like quite a cool company I like the Roman references. I would be curious what kind of opportunities do you see in a European context for government tech?
The problems are similar. Many local governments try to shoehorn tools from the private sector — Excel, SalesForce, Post-Its — into their operations. These "work" but are far from the right tool for the job and put the onus of ensuring compliance on the office.
That is further compounded by the relative lack of European based startups. Data has to be held within the country. Some laws are vague or have loopholes, but we firmly believe that constituent information should not be subject to other states' snooping. That means recreating tools specifically for European regulations and cloning the infrastructure per country. Not impossible, we're just not there yet.
P.S.
The Roman references are just the tip of the iceberg. Both founders are philosophers so our values (http://seneca.systems/values) are the heart of the company.
The work continues! My company DataMade is working with PPF to make local legislation more accessible, starting with Chicago, New York and Philly: http://councilmatic.org/
I interviewed with the team and learned about their projects. Speaking candidly, I was ecstatic and optimistic about a "civic" startup, that has potential to bring tech break throughs to neighborhoods and local governments; however their current projects didn't seem that exciting, they rubbed me off more as projects any appropriately marketed consulting shop could take.
1) You're working on something meaningful.
Look at what OpenGov is doing: making government financial data more transparent and accessible. Compare that with your average Yet-Another-Food-Delivery startup or "bringing the blockchain to an industry that doesn't need a blockchain."
2) The people you work for are unbelievably appreciative.
Every local government office we work with is so thankful for what we do. Basic features — scheduling an email reminder, scoping by geography, autocomplete — blows their minds. This goes back to (1), since you're helping them accomplish really meaningful objectives.
3) If you keep the hiring bar high, your team is incredible.
Passion is something you hear a lot about in the Valley, but how passionate can you really be about SnapChat. Maybe there are interesting challenges, but get a group together that wants to take on government and you're guaranteed to jump out of bed in the morning.
Precisely _because_ most people see working with governments to be a schlep, the ones who do self-select for passion.
http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
This is comical. Marc Andreesen is the least OpenGov-style person I can possibly think of. He is literally the definition of the American Oligarchy. When confronted with the Snowden revelations he said both that:
1. Everyone knew that the government was doing this. 2. That Snowden was a traitor.
Snowden's treason was only possible if the public didn't know what has been going on, so really this is code for "us guys with investments into company's that the INT organizations have contacted know what is really going on; we don't need a pesky whistle blower leaking it to the public".
OpenGov my ass.
"If you look up in the encyclopedia 'traitor' there's a picture of Ed Snowden."
That is fucking Andreesen. He's not on our side. He's the enemy, in the same group as the banks that are corrupting our governments.
I get political realism / anarchy in international relations. I really do. I get how every telegraph ever sent is recorded in some American or British INT station.
But publicly shaming someone that validated that we essentially live in 1984 as a fucking traitor / criminal is despicable.
Some of us can't be bought. Some people don't care about money so much that they'll keep silent about assholes ruining our democracies.
Andreesen is just the one we have on record. Half of fucking wall street and Washington think like him.
And if you find this comment downvoted just remember that our intelligence agencies have tools to manipulate internet discussions:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/new-snowden-docs-reveal-british...